Bob Badour wrote:
> Someone mentioned ruby on rails recently. I read where one project> dropped java entirely after doing a sample module using ruby on rails.> From what I can gather, though, ruby on rails just does a better job of> automating all the bullshit boilerplate code rather than really> improving things.

That's my understanding too. Ruby as a language has some advantages
over Java in terms of eliminating boilerplate, and Rails (really a
platform in which you can do a lot without knowing much Ruby)
demonstrates Ruby's value for easily concocting domain-specific
languages (hence eliminating much of the bullshit boilerplate,
elimination that the constipated Java will never do well), since it's
easy to hook into the runtime system and implement meta-class
molestations of various sorts.

Ruby and Rails's popularity, though, is based primarily on their
"dynamism"; programmers these days seem to run from static typing like
Tokyo residents from a giant moth destroying buildings, completely
mistaking the brain-dead literalism of Java for real type systems (e.g.
the ML family) and first-class functions.

Languages like Lisp, though, do a much better job than Ruby. The syntax
just isn't "cool," whereas apparently Smalltalk variants are.